photo credit pixabay.com
To give myself a little credit, I will point out that I had listened to an early portion and thought it sounded okay. My office space up in our loft seemed like a good recording area, since it’s away from the main house and has curtains and carpet. And I was impatient to begin once I felt like beginning. “Let’s get this show on the road!” is my frequent mantra. So I plunged on, reading chapter after chapter and ignoring the little voice in my head that said I might be on the wrong track. (Literally.) Sometimes I forgot to turn off the ceiling fan. Sometimes there was a dog barking or the noise of a plane or a lawnmower coming through the window even though I had closed it, and I didn’t stop and re-do those sections. To use my rockslide example from yesterday, I didn’t remove any pebbles but just starting shoving at the rocks. I didn’t do the smallest possible first step. I didn’t (as Gretchen Rubin says in this post) read the manual. I just figured, ‘Oh, I’m a good speaker, and I’ve always read aloud a lot, so I have this. I can just do it. There’s no need for prep.’ And I was correct, but I was wrong.
The thing is, I’ve been listening to audiobooks lately, noticing how seamless they sound, and wondering how they did it. I was noticing that most of them had been recorded in a professional studio. I had just read Rabia Chaudry (see below to read the quote) describe her days of unremitting toil as she did the audio version of her new book on the Adnan Syed case. I had puh-lenty of warning that this was not a simple task. But I forged ahead anyway. I dove in. And now . . . I have to climb back out, dry myself off, and start all over again.
Oh well. I actually enjoyed re-visiting my own advice and being reminded of how little I follow it and how much I need to do so. I knew that at some point I’d have to re-do it anyway, as I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t meet the industry standards for the platforms that distribute audiobooks. I was thinking that this was a beta version that I might give away for free. So at least we’re not going to spend hours more editing it. We’ll just do it again, and do it right. Then I can decide how to distribute it. And maybe from now on I’ll spend an hour or so to save myself a dozen.
From Rabia Chaudry’s blog Split the Moon:
And yes, there is an audiobook. I’m recording the sucker. “How hard can it be?” I thought when I was asked to do it. Let me just put it this way: it takes me about 5 hours to read 50 pages. The book is over 400 pages. Do the math. I’ve recorded for 5 days and have about 3 more days to go. By the end of every recording day I can barely form words anymore. Some words, words I use all the time, don’t even sound right anymore. After a while I start wondering if anything I’m saying is even coherent. I periodically break into tears when reading hard passages. My intestinal track is one loud beast, a revelation to me, and often competes for the mic in the dead-silent recording booth.
All in all, I feel deeply sorry for the sound editor who has to deal with me saying “sorry”, “thirsty”, “tummy”, “need a tissue” and a host of other things a million times as we trudge through my inability to simply read with expression. Nonetheless they seem hopeful that it will actually get done, so I have hope too. You can order the audiobook on Audible.com.
NOTE: There’s a new page on this website, “Personal and Political,” where I’m writing posts or linking to those of others about the upcoming presidential election. For the most part I’m directing readers to go to my personal facebook page, but there will be some material posted directly on that page. Don’t know how long it will be up–sort of depends on the development of new developments!